On 15th June, 2004, you were gunned down brutally in an incident which the Special Investigation Team (STI) constituted by the Supreme Court in 2011, called a fake encounter. Officially, for 7 years, you were a dreaded terrorist: you left your cosy Thane home on 12th June 2004 along with Ghulam Sheikh alias Pranesh Pillai, a Malayali convert to Islam, and two Pakistani nationals, to kill Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat.

Now, oddly enough, officially, as per Supreme Court guidelines, you had no intention of killing Modi. Like Sajid and Atif in the Batala House encounter, you were a victim of an extra-judicial killing. You were a target of state terrorism. Thus you are now a symbol of brutal Muslim persecution afoot in such diverse centres as Hyderabad, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat.

It is not fashionable to recount your story on the 10th anniversary of the Gujarat genocide. But I think you—and several individuals like Sohrabuddin—represent the collateral damage of the event that changed India. You refract and therefore present things unseen in other deplorable stories like Naroda Patiya and Best Bakery. You are more in tune with the way 100,000 thousand residents of Gujarat saw their women being raped again and again and children killed—and still remain ostracized by Narendra Modi’s regime.

Ishrat, you were killed not once but twice—first, of course by bullets emerging from the unholy guns of the Gujarat encounter specialists. Then by barbs of right wing bloggers, commentators and senior ex-government functionaries who raised doubts about your character.

A retired government officer pointed to the fact that you had checked in hotels with different men. This made your behaviour suspicious—and liable for death? Did I get it right Mr. Retired Government Officer?

Ishrat, you were killed first as a `terrorist’; and then as a woman. You see you had two very `negative’ connotations—you were a Muslim and a woman who had chosen to live life on her own terms. Right wing bloggers—many of them sadists and perverted modernists—people who support the BJP and watching date rape and pornography inside a state assembly precinct—do not like Muslims; they hate more, independent Muslim women. These fascist elements accuse and abuse me whenever I try to write on secular issues. They are not ready to recognize anything said or written against Narendra Modi or his fascist police state. God knows who made them Hindus—they are all anti-Sanatan dharma figures.

I am a real Hindu—and I weep for you. I wear the sacred thread. Yet my Brahmin code of honour and fair play forces me to acknowledge that most bloggers and are doing a disservice to India, its constitution and the Hindu-Sanatan dharma religion.

Rightwing elements celebrated when your name was `leaked’ by none other David Coleman Headley, the notorious 26/11 mastermind, as being part of Lashkar-e-Toiba. The fact remains that the National Investigation Agency (NIA), which went to the US to interrogate Headley, made no such revelation. Headley never took your name even once during the interrogation. Yet the Indian English medium press carried the news story with aplomb. Later, the retraction by NIA appeared as a small news item.

Only the NIA had access to Headley. If the NIA did not hear your name from Headley’s lips, then who did? Why was the false story about you having Lashkar links splashed all over the media?

This is how we treat dead persons in India—by maligning and besmirching their name. Today I am ashamed to belong to this rotten anti-Muslim society—each and every inch of the Hindu in me finds everything anti-Muslim around, stinking badly, and contrary, to the fair name of India.

By not defending you, all Indian intellectuals have failed the test of secularism. By not blackening the face of the bureaucrat—who publicly attacked your morals—and parading him through the streets of Delhi—they are guilty of a major crime against humanity.

On the 10th anniversary of Gujarat riots I am filled with dread and sadness. How does it feel to be a Muslim in India? This question is spiritual and existential—and I doubt if Swami Vivekanand or Jean Paul Sartre would have had an answer.

How does it feel to know and live day by day with the knowledge that Ehsan Jaafri, a secular intellectual, a poet, a man who had gone beyond identity politics, whose fair name was identified more by his calling in life than religion, was killed in the most despicable, medieval and barbaric manner during the Gulbarga Society riots? His RSS-VHP-communal murderers clasped a sansda (a collar used to clutch a dog’s neck) around his neck; he was paraded around in this condition; he was dragged mercilessly; first his hands were chopped off; then legs; he was cut into pieces—imagine something that horrible happening to someone’s father or mother or anyone. We must thank the wife and children of Ehsan Jaafri for not demanding the public execution of Narendra Modi, who personally supervised what happened to Ehsan Jaafri.

On 8th March, 2002, RSS-VHP goondas levelled the grave of Wali Gujarati—a Sufi, and, considered by many, as the father of Urdu—to the ground—in the heart of Ahmedabad city. Till date, the grave has not been restored. Hundreds of architectural buildings were razed to the ground. Were all these Muslim buildings? Is Urdu a Muslim language?

Pro-RSS bloggers need to be given a public flogging. What do they have to say about the murder of Ehsan Jaafri? I have several friends in Bollywood. Not one of them—even enlightened precursors of the Indian indie cinema—ever stated their intent of making a film on Ehsan Jaafri.

In this fascist game, rich and dalaal Muslims are as guilty Sanghi Hindus. No one is willing to speak up for you.

Right now, we, the forces of progress and development, are involved in a life or death struggle in Uttar Pradesh. For twenty years, regional parties like the SP and BSP—along with a fascist party like the BJP—bled India’s most populous state dry to the point where the daily life of its citizens became a nightmare. Then Rahul Gandhi and Digvijaya Singh arrived on the scene. Overnight, people of UP saw a new hope—a leadership angry at their plight, incensed at their helplessness, with a vision to instil new hope in bleak surroundings. I am part of the Congress campaign, which began deep in some of the most backward regions of East UP. These were areas from where the Congress had drawn a blank consistently over the years. But there was major scope for work—benefits of central schemes like MNREGA, Indira Awaas Yojana, Rajiv Gandhi Vidyutikaran Yojana were not reaching the poor. People had job cards but no work. Electricity poles could be seen but there was no electricity. Major irrigation projects inaugurated and run by pre-1989 Congress governments were in disuse.

What began as a mass movement to awaken the people of Uttar Pradesh turned into a tide by the closing months of 2011 when Rahul Gandhi hit the streets to invoke the poor—now, after 5 phases of polling, and two more to go, it is clear that the people of Uttar Pradesh want a change.

For Rahul Gandhi and Digvijaya Singh, and members of their team, change means turning Uttar Pradesh into a secular, plural, inclusive, pro-poor developmental model in stark contrast to the RSS-Narendra Modi-BJP model of communal fascist state, pro-rich development, as practiced in Gujarat.

Ishrat, officers of Gujarat police killed you; we want to save thousands like you from meeting the same fate. We want India and the world to know the truth about `vibrant’ Gujarat—how in a province of the world’s most populous democracy, Muslims have been turned into second class citizens; if you are a Muslim you cannot buy a house in Ahmedabad, no matter how much money you possess.

We want to show India and the world that an alternative to Gujarat is possible. That we can win and govern a state by ensuring free and equal participation of minorities, by celebrating, not suppressing our diversity, by creating an atmosphere of joy, harmony and belonging, not fear, discord and terror, amongst the people.

In this venture the last two phases—on 28th February and 3rd March—are crucial. About 128 seats are going to the polls. Quite a few of them have over 25% Muslim voters. The worrying thing is that leaders like Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati prefer the BJP over Congress. The BJP is hand in glove both with BSP and SP. Why else would Varun Gandhi raise the spectre of SP getting the maximum seats in UP? Since when a pseudo-election analyst—actually a communal, anti-Muslim politician—like Varun Gandhi—started caring for SP? Obviously Varun Gandhi, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav have a secret understanding. The game here seems to be to raise the bar of SP—which is not in contest in several Muslim dominated seats in the Ruhelkhand region—so that Muslim votes going to Congress get diverted. If Muslims are seen as leaving a secular party like Congress and drifting towards the SP, Hindu votes will get consolidated behind the BJP!

So Mulayam Singh, who calls himself secular, is playing a dirty communal game that benefits both the BJP and the SP at the cost of secularism.

In UP, only the Congress can stem the rising tide of the BJP. Mulayam and Mayawati are totally worthless. The only fitting tribute to thousands of innocent people who were killed in various massacres of Gujarat can be a resounding defeat for the BJP in UP. The only homage to you would be secular Hindus and Muslims voting en masse for the Congress in order to stop the BJP.

May you rest in peace…

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

Author

Amaresh Misra is an independent historian, author and novelist. Currently resident in Delhi, he is also a freelance journalist, political commentator, columnist on foreign policy, an anti-fascist, civil/minority/Dalit-Adivasi rights activist, and a film critic. His publications include War of Civilizations: India AD 1857, Vols 1 and 2 (Delhi: Rupa, 2007); Mangal Pandey: The True Story of an Indian Revolutionary (Delhi: Rupa, 2005); Lucknow: Fire of Grace: The Story of its Renaissance, Revolution and the Aftermath (Delhi: Harper Collins, 1999.) and The Minister’s Wife (a novel—Penguin, 2002). He is a recipient of several anti-communal awards, and has lectured widely in Indian and American universities on the nationalist war of 1857, medieval and modern Indian history, vicissitudes of contemporary Indian politics and the battle for secularism in the Indian subcontinent. Presently, he is working on a new novel, a new book on Indian cinema, and a biography of Emperor Akbar.
He is also Convener, Anti Communal Front, Uttar Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee.

Amaresh Misra is an independent historian, author and novelist. Currently resident in Delhi, he is also a freelance journalist, political commentator, colum. . .

From around the web

More from The Times of India

Comments

Top Comment

()

Author

Amaresh Misra is an independent historian, author and novelist. Currently resident in Delhi, he is also a freelance journalist, political commentator, columnist on foreign policy, an anti-fascist, civil/minority/Dalit-Adivasi rights activist, and a film critic. His publications include War of Civilizations: India AD 1857, Vols 1 and 2 (Delhi: Rupa, 2007); Mangal Pandey: The True Story of an Indian Revolutionary (Delhi: Rupa, 2005); Lucknow: Fire of Grace: The Story of its Renaissance, Revolution and the Aftermath (Delhi: Harper Collins, 1999.) and The Minister’s Wife (a novel—Penguin, 2002). He is a recipient of several anti-communal awards, and has lectured widely in Indian and American universities on the nationalist war of 1857, medieval and modern Indian history, vicissitudes of contemporary Indian politics and the battle for secularism in the Indian subcontinent. Presently, he is working on a new novel, a new book on Indian cinema, and a biography of Emperor Akbar.
He is also Convener, Anti Communal Front, Uttar Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee.

Amaresh Misra is an independent historian, author and novelist. Currently resident in Delhi, he is also a freelance journalist, political commentator, colum. . .